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Create multi-platform desktop apps with HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript

tidesdk.org

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Re: Create multi-platform desktop apps with HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript

#31

Post by fairwinds »

Titanium was transitioned to TideSDK in early 2012. At this point the code lacked support for any modern operating system other than Windows 7. Ubuntu and OSX support for any current versions of these OS's did not yet exist.

The challenges involved in moving forward with the code base from the previous maintainer were documented in this post:

http://www.tidesdk.org/blog/2012/11/16/1-dot-3-1-beta-releas...

The work has been steady and ongoing. The software itself is complex and substantial progress has been made. More that 1 million line changes of code were made to end of Dec, 2012.

This kind of investment and involvement in this project has been huge for us. It is certainly deeper than the rebranding and documentation effort that we also undertook as part of the project.

TideSDK became an affiliate project of Software in the Public Interest (SPI) in October, 2012. As part of this non-profit organization, we stand together with other significant and substantial open source projects (including Postgres, Drupal, Debian, Jenkins, ArchLinux) that are under the non-profit administration of the SPI.

Tens of thousands of developers now discovering TideSDK as a result of our efforts. This number is steadily increasing. Ongoing upgrades and fundamental code changes in the sources are leading to an amazing solution.

Commercial developments involving TideSDK are also underway for many. Obviously, despite the surge in mobile use, desktop development is comparatively smaller. That said, there remains an important need to address for the desktop that TideSDK is filling.

We've put plenty of effort into establishing community around TideSDK as well and to make resources available to developers:

Documentation: http://tidesdk.multipart.net/docs/user-dev/generated Source Code: https://github.com/TideSDK/TideSDK Tutorials: Get started easily http://tidesdk.multipart.net/docs/user-dev/generated/#!/guid... Q & A on Stack Overflow: Get help http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/tidesdk Report a Bug: Help us improve https://github.com/TideSDK/TideSDK/issues. IRC: Chat with us on #tidesdk on freenode.net Twitter: Follow TideSDK @tidesdk. Blog: Read our blog at http://tidesdk.org/blog. Knowledge Base: Read the wiki https://github.com/TideSDK/TideSDK/wiki Google Groups: Join our mailing list https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/tidesdk.

In addition, more great things are coming this year as the result of our involvement with TideSDK. The core talent behind TideSDK formed http://coastalforge.com to bring services and support. We've also got an amazing new solution to reveal shortly that has been spawned from our work. More on these efforts quite soon.

David Pratt TideSDK Project Lead

Re: Create multi-platform desktop apps with HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript

#33

Post by fairwinds »

jakozaur wrote: post #14

Great project! The only minor thing that disturbes me are a few well-known logos (Atlassian, GitHub) beyond "Thank you". I know it is a grey area of ethics, but perhaps we should encourage to put real partners (clients, etc.). If you quickly scroll you may see it as more impressive, but in long run listing that kinds of acts seems unprofessional (e.g. listing Microsoft as major partner, when you just license their so…

Our thank you on our landing page is not about identifying partners. It is an expression of our thanks for organizations that have helped us by donating software or services to allow us to continue developing TideSDK. Hope that helps to clarify this.

Re: Create multi-platform desktop apps with HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript

#34

Post by fairwinds »

MaxGfeller wrote: post #30

I find it weird that the only sample application built with it is the old Wunderlist. Wunderlist 2 - which was released a few weeks ago - was developed native for each platform.

Perhaps it may seem so. That said, the original Wunderlist was likely the most infamous use of the original technology that reached millions of users.

It's no slight against its makers to have gone purely native but the fact is that most companies developing a todo app do not have millions in investment or the sort of native programming capacity to throw at this kind of project.

TideKit is a solution that is going to get you on all platforms quickly and its only improving over time. As you might be aware, the new Wunderlist 2 seemed to have lost its linux support as a result of their recent shift.

We're hoping to show something quite soon that shows a speed and quality of development that will have most wundering why they transitioned to native.

Re: Create multi-platform desktop apps with HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript

#35

Post by tehwalrus »

Thank you very much for updating this after Appcelerator dropped it.

I have written quite a few tools using this system (HTML5/JS, with a little help from a couple of python modules) and I was furious when I updated the Titanium build tools to find out that desktop mode had been dropped and I could no longer build cross-platform installers!

I have been editing the HTML code inside my .app folders on OS X while waiting for this to come out - I'll install it ASAP and see what I can get working again :)

Re: Create multi-platform desktop apps with HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript

#36

Post by tehwalrus »

bbayer wrote: post #11

Can anyone explain what is the difference with Adobe AIR?

AFAIK Air doesn't support Python, Ruby and PHP scripts inline in the local applications?

(Granted the language mixing code (called Kroll) is quite slow if you have large shared objects, but I've found with careful interface design you can mitigate the downsides and get a fast, stable interface, in my case mixing python modules like gzip and javascript.)

Re: Create multi-platform desktop apps with HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript

#38

Post by fairwinds »

toni wrote: post #29
_neil wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean being able to compile to a .app file on OSX, .exe on windows, etc. TideSDK can do this in a wrapper-type of way like you mentioned.

Yes, node-webkit does that too. Check out: https://github.com/rogerwang/node-webkit/wiki/How-to-package...

TideSDK handles the packaging and bundles everything into packaging native to the platform. You don't have to worry about what to include because it is gathered and packaged for you.

Re: Create multi-platform desktop apps with HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript

#39

Post by polshaw »

Very interesting.. can anyone comment on the differences between this and node-webkit/adobe air/appJS ??

Can source code (ie. JS) be completely private (ie could not be reasonably accessed by a competitor?)

Does it have 'custom' jumplist support on windows (eg. media player buttons)?

Global hotkey support??

Re: Create multi-platform desktop apps with HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript

#40

Post by polshaw »

WayneDB wrote: post #9

For anyone looking to use native UI components and not HTML/CSS/JS, take a look at these two which seem to be growing rapidly: https://github.com/picoe/eto https://github.com/mono/xwt

These lack the real advantage of HTML/CSS/JS apps though, which is that you can make one responsive app and package it for all desktop and mobile platforms.
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